Provincial 4-H Beef Heifer Show- Results

Well the Provincial 4-H Beef Heifer Show has come and gone, and it was a great success for all of those involved.

There were some great cattle exhibited, and I was able to meet some really neat young kids that are the next generation cattlemen and cattlewomen.

Congrats to all of the winners both in the ring and outside. Hope to see a bunch of familiar faces out again next year, and good luck to all those that started to compete at Summer Synergy yesterday.

Here are a few pictures of the winners!

Champion Herd- Megan McLeod

Champion Purebred Female- Lori Morash

Res. Champion Purebred Female- Colby Heaven

Champion Commercial Female- Cole Dodgson

Res. Champion Commercial Female- Dakota Townsend

Champion Purebred Angus

Champion Purebred AOB Female

Champion Charolais Female

Ch. Jr Commercial Yearling

Res. Jr Purebred Yearling

Res. Sr. Commercial Yearling

It's Almost Give A Way Time!

Things have been a little hectic this week. I am trying to get some stuff done for Bethan's baby shower, and in the mean time doing some work, going to a concert, and doing some cooking and baking.

I didn't want you waiting for a whole week for some good blogs, so with the help of my good friend Ty Christian Wilson we are working on a little give away for the blog! Stay tuned for more details to come but in the mean time check out his sweat album cover for his first album release! You can also check him out on Facebook.

Provincial 4-H Beef Heifer Show

Yesterday I got to head down to Olds to help judge at the Alberta Provincial 4-H Beef Heifer Show. This was a program my sister and I grew up attending, and have many fond memories of. Crystal had 2 Reserve Champion Females, we had many breed champions, several aggregate wins. We learned how to do show ring judging and about color coordinating outfits while doing this. Jenine and Garth were always the 2 best in this department! And most recently I have memories of having my front teeth knocked out during what was supposed to be a fun night of being hypnotized...

This trip however, I was down helping being an official judge for the judging competition as well as for the marking competition. It was really fun to get back and see some of the kids. It sure does make you feel old when kids who were just born when you were showing are now senior members and almost out of the program.

In the judging competition, there are classes with 4 animals in which the kids must place and give reasons on why they think that they should be placed that way. There is an official judge for the class who will place the animals 1-4 and then there will be people who will listen to the kids reasons. The kids are given a score out of 50 on how closely they placed the class to the official, and then a score out of 50 on their reasons. The perfect score is 100, but I have only seen this achieved a few times in my life.

The kids also got to participate in a team grooming competition. I was not helping with this, but it is still fun to watch the kids in this competition. They are placed on teams of 2, most of the times they do not know their partner before hand. The teams get 15 mins to groom the animal just like it was to be shown in the ring right after. They are judged on their knowledge of what they are doing, how well they do the work, if they work together as a team and how much they are able to change the animal (hide their faults) with their grooming.

It was great to be able to give back to a program that I have been able to take so much from. Everything from life lessons and great friends, to steer cheques to pay for cars and life long friends. There are many memories that I will forever cherish, and it is great to be able to go back and see the next generation continuing where we left off.

New Arrivals & Friends

I know I have been sharing my weekend adventure with 'the Eng" for the past couple of days, but the truth is that in the last couple weeks there has been a new many come into my life.

Meet Stanley Christopher Walter. He is the new son of 2 of my best friends Chris and Bethan. Lil Stanley was born on June 28th early in the morning, and I got to wake up to a call from Bethan that morning with the announcement of their new arrival.

Although I am not a fan of children I have to admit that this guy is pretty cute. I don't think that he looks like either one of them right now, but I am sure with time that will change.

This weekend I am headed out to see the new family and hang out with the little guy. Don't be expecting pictures of me holding the little guy next week though... I do not hold babies!

Weekend With "the Eng"- Part 2

Day 2 of our weekend started with a little walk to Starbucks. After how much we had ate last night, we needed to get up and moving around.

We jumped in the car and headed towards Breton so that "the Eng" could meet my parents. We had some time to kill, so I thought it might be neat to show him where I grew up. That place was Lewis Farms, and we drove by the main farm as well as the Bull Farm, where we lived as kids. It is always neat to go by Lewis's as it is pretty grand in comparison to most farms.

We then headed onto the farm, only to be met by this 10 mins into the drive....

Yes there was a bike race going on. We thought that there was just a group of ppl out biking, but about 300 bikers later, and driving 20-60km/hr, we went right through the race. The drive went from being 1 hrs to 2hrs, and us almost missing our tee time in Breton!

Along the way though I was able to educate "the Eng" all about farming. We talked about what the different crops were, the difference between silage and hay, and also the timing of crops. It was great to see some canola crops coming into bloom right now!

Pretty yellow fields of Canola

Once we finally made it to Breton, we had a quick 9 holes of golf with my mom and dad. We got a chance to look at the calves at home, and see how they are changing. I had not seen them for a month, so they had grown and changed lots in that time frame.

The next stop was the Ponoka Stampede to watch the finals of the rodeo and Chuckwagon racing. It was a great night out, and there was some awesome action on the infield. The final heat for all the cash in the chuckwagon's was won of the best I have ever seen, with the winner getting to the wire 0:00:01 of a second faster then that guy in 2nd, who also happened to be his son!


It was a great weekend after all, and nice to be able to just relax with some great company along the way. Guess I will really have to do something great this weekend to compete with that!

Weekend With " The Eng" Part 1

This past weekend "the Eng" decided that he was going to surprise me. I am the type of person who really does not like surprises as I need to be in control of the situation at all time. But with blind faith I decided to agree, not that I had much choice, and let him plan a weekend for us.

He showed up on Friday night to pick me up with some beautiful summer flowers! Not a bad way to start the weekend.

I really need to learn the names of all these types

Saturday started with getting breakfast in bed, followed by me being told we were going golfing. I had a feeling leading up to this weekend that I knew the destinations of the activities we would be doing, but not knowing 100% still bugged me a little bit.

We drove out west of the city to a golf course called, The Ranch. It is a really beautiful course, one that I had always heard good things about but had never played.

Our golf carts had GPS which was cool.

The course is real beautiful and it was probably the nicest day we have had all summer. The bugs were not to bad, and it was hot! The course is really neat as it keeps the ranch theme throughout. There was an old thrasher, wagon wheels, skulls and so much more.

After golfing we headed back and got changed for supper. Again I did not know 100% where we were going, but a had a hunch. My instincts were right and we headed to Lux Steakhouse downtown for supper. This is probably one of my favorite places in Edmonton, so he really did a good job picking!

The Lobster Mac & Cheese is to die for!

It was a great start to the weekend, but Sunday would be the real test for "the Eng"....

Happy Canada Day!

Just wanted to say a quick Happy 114th Canada Day to our country and all my fellow Canadian's. Hope everyone enjoyed their day off and was able to celebrate with family and friends.

I see this video this morning and thought that it was perfect for today!